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Darren O'Connor: Citizens oversight board needed to police the police

By Darren O'Connor

Posted:
08/12/2016 06:52:56 PM MDT

Updated:
08/12/2016 06:53:20 PM MDT

A Boulder police officer makes a traffic stop on University in January. (Camera file photo)

Hillard Heintze, the contractor hired for $96,400 by the city of Boulder to analyze racial bias in arrest data, recently gave their report to City Council. It struck many of us that Marcia Thompson, an African American member of the three-person team who presented their findings in person, was an attorney with an impressive background qualifying her to weigh in on the topic. Sadly, perhaps even informatively, she was relegated to introducing herself and then flipping the slides so that Robert Davis, former chief of police in San Diego, and Dr. Weiss, also a well credentialed professional in the area of data analysis and police staff modeling, could share the findings.

Davis shared repeatedly his appreciation that Boulder proactively reached out to their firm to look over the Boulder Police Department's treatment of African Americans. At the request of the city, HH specifically compared Boulder to other cities in terms of rates of arrests of African Americans and found that Boulder is not the worst, especially compared to other college towns (an analysis they presented of their own volition). I too am glad that Boulder officials initiated this research, but if it ends with the HH report and some incremental steps taken, I believe that business as usual — the business of policing that results in five times the arrest rates for African Americans — will continue in the white space of Boulder.

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Dr. Elijah Anderson describes white space as follows: "For black people in particular, white spaces vary in kind, but their most visible and distinctive feature is their overwhelming presence of white people and their absence of black people. When the anonymous black person enters the white space, others there immediately try to make sense of him or her — to figure out "who that is," or to gain a sense of the nature of the person's business and whether they need to be concerned."

Anderson continues, describing how black men and women, despite driving expensive vehicles, find that: "When driving in the white space, they attract special scrutiny; on occasion, they get stopped and questioned by the police, who then may "discover" charges on which to detain them."

Should a person of color be willing to file a complaint about such treatment, in Boulder they can do so through the Professional Standards Review Panel. HH also reviewed the PSRP, and the report documents several complainants who were discouraged from taking any formal action because it could impact an officer's career.

And should people choose to file a complaint, there is no means of doing so outside of working with police officers to do so, which is much like asking the victim of rape or assault to go to the family of the perpetrator to ask for help. Boulder police discouraging people filing complaints, documented by HH, shows this analogy to be far too accurate.

Indeed, the data on disparate treatment of person of color warrants complaint and action in Boulder. Our relative treatment of people of color compared to other college towns notwithstanding, the BPD's own report showed Hispanic or Latino individuals compared to whites had arrest vs. citation rates 2.1 times higher; the ratio of arrests to citations for black individuals compared to whites was 2.5; for American Indians or Alaskan Natives it was 3.7. What this tells us is that if you're white in Boulder, you are far more likely to receive a ticket than be hauled to jail than those who present as black or brown. Should you wish to file a complaint — as is your right — about this treatment, you will have to speak to Boulder police officers, whom HH's report has shown to be more concerned about the careers of the officer involved, in some cases, than the unacceptable manner in which they treated you.

Police policing themselves will always leave community questioning the objectivity of such a process. I strongly urge the city to create a citizens oversight board, such as has been done in Newark, N.J., with the power to subpoena records and police officer testimony, and to make its disciplinary decisions stick. The citizens oversight board should also be granted the authority to audit department policies and procedures, and to issue public reports. Given the assertions by HH that BPD is a progressive police department, such oversight would, if accurate, result in reports of nothing to see here.

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